nvremind Reminders.app bollocks

I posted an update to nvremind this morning. It’s small, but it has a few nifty1 things in it.

First, I switched the default behavior to always modify @remind to @reminded after posting a reminder. If you don’t want to modify your files (because you’re doing it by hand after receiving a reminder or something), use the -z option to prevent it. -r is deprecated but won’t break it if it’s still in your scheduled script. It just won’t do what you think it will do anymore.

Partly because of this change, nvremind can now handle multiple reminders in a file. Only the tag that triggered a reminder will be modified, tags whose due date hasn’t come up yet will be left intact for a future run.

My favorite part was the easiest part, as it turns out. nvremind now works with Reminders.app! You can run it with the -m argument to make it create new items in your Reminders list with an immediate due date. It pops them in notification center and on iCloud-synced devices almost instantly. That’s pretty handy.

If you use OmniFocus on iOS and have it enabled to grab from Reminders, you can also use this to export to your OmniFocus database. A little roundabout, I know.

Next steps

If I get a chance, I’ll make an installer similar to Slogger’s install.rb. It will ask you some basic questions about intervals to run at, location of your notes folder, etc., then set up the launchd task automatically.

I also want to allow custom reminder text that overrides the note name if specified. I’m thinking about a @remind(2013-06-02 06:00 [This is the actual reminder text]) format. If the bracketed text exists, it uses that as the title. That would make multiple reminders in a document make more sense.

The other thought is that if the reminder tag is on a line by itself, use the document title, but if its on a line with text, use the surrounding text as the reminder. That would work well in plain text todo lists… food for thought.

I used to say “nifty” ironically, but it wore into my vocabulary. So did “swell.” I’m going to try to bring back the usage of “hooligans” and “fisticuffs,” too.↩